A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, played, heard, observed, worn, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here.

What: “The Los Angeles Times Encyclopedia of the Lakers,” by Steve Springer.

Price: $29.95. Published by the Los Angeles Times.

Given the coincidences that this fine book was written by someone who works with me, edited by someone who supervises my work, copy-edited by someone who probably copy-edited this very review, published by the company that pays me, is about the team I currently write about and that this review was assigned to me by someone who, well, is a person to admire, most properly from afar . . .

Given all that and, of course, not taking any of that into account as I grind out this totally objective opinion: Well, it’s a great book!

I can think of no other publication that begins with an item on Paula Abdul, switches immediately to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and has about seven entries detailing the Jack McKinney-Paul Westhead transition in the Laker firmament. If you love that kind of stuff, or have been ransacking the bookstores for more information on ace trainer Gary Vitti, you cannot miss this book.

Some guy named Magic Johnson wrote the foreword, and, though it’s quite moving, if you ask me, there should be more of Springer and less of the other guy.

Springer has written about nearly every team in the region, or so the back cover tells me, but when I first read the bio I thought it said nearly every team “in the religion.”

Of course that kind of typo would never have made it past all the great people involved--but wouldn’t that be another great encyclopedia?

God knows, the typesetter for this project probably was my baby-sitter.